[Dovecot] how to cat / grep from dbox files

[Timo Sirainen]

On 5.5.2011, at 18.05, Sarder Kamal wrote:

> Drafts/dbox-Mails/u.11
> I get the following output
> 2 M1e C4daa51f6
> N 000000000000030A
> �Tmo�6��_q�0`�B�r�D�� ��tF�5Xܵ�HI'��D��T��=*^�u��M�A�x/�=ω׋E
..
> As it is quite evident, the output is in binary format, but I need it in text (even if that means I use some other command and pipe the output to cat / grep / sed) -- can this be done?

The output is binary because the mail is stored compressed. Otherwise it would have been in text.

> This server was configured and maintained by someone else, and I am very new to dovecot or this dbox format (I used to use courier-imap). would appreciate if anyone could please suggest what could/should be done to get to my objectives. All pointers/suggestions appreciated.

man doveadm-fetch
man doveadm-search-query

example: doveadm fetch -u user 'uid text' mailbox INBOX body "hello world"